ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — A new weather satellite in the latest high-tech satellite series for GOES West is being prepped to be launched with updated technology that was developed by L3Harris and tested right here in Rochester. Once the satellite is in position it will provide more data and weather information for many across the western hemisphere including the U.S.
The GOES-T Satellite, set to be renamed as GOES-18 is set to launch out of Cape Canaveral, FL on Tuesday, March 1st. This satellite is number 3 in a series of 4 advanced geostationary weather satellites associated with new Advanced Based Imagery (ABI) technology developed by L3Harris that works to help meteorologists observe and predict local weather events on a day-to-day basis such as wildfires and severe storms.
“What’s very exciting about ABI compared to the previous generation of instruments is that it’s giving us 3 times that spectral information, or 3 times as many colors 4 times the spatial resolution so we can zoom in a lot closer on features.”
Dr. Daniel Gall, Advanced Baseline Imager chief systems engineer for L3Harris Technologies says that this satellite went through extensive environmental testing right here in Rochester to make sure it was suitable for the pressure and temperature changes in space.
“The L3Harris facilities in Rochester are really, we like to call them national landmarks really, they’re facilities that have been around for a good deal of time and have very advanced capabilities as far as the environmental testing capabilities goes…”
To put into perspective just how much data the satellite is producing, if you wanted to take the full image of the satellite you would need about 60 4k TVs just to display the image at full resolution.
“Being able to put this technology up there to give people better awareness, better forecasts to you know, help people get out of the way of these hazards is something that’s really important and really gratifying to be able to work on that.”
The new satellite data should be available to the public sometime later this year.
~Meteorologist Christine Gregory